Month ago, a senior government officer visited Sabarmati Ashram and explained me that how much it is difficult to understand Gandhi and complex thoughts, approaches and methods of him. Today i came across similar thoughts in article titled The missingness of Gandhi by Shiv Visvanathan.

Instead of editing/commenting his thoughts or text; I simply felt to reproduce it here, because it exactly fits into my thoughts and feelings about usages of "Gandhi" in my age...

...as Shiv Visvanathan says....

I must confess I am an
old-fashioned man. I feel out of place and even out of time. I belonged to an
age which honoured the self and not the selfie. Yet I feel strangely relevant
as I realise my anger and my memories, my sense of classic and craft has something
to say. I have stories that are still worth listening to, yet I feel sad when I
look around me.

I know my world has
shrunk. My icons do not make sense. People have not heard of them. Some even
call them my collection of eccentrics. But I want to talk about them. For all
of them the hero was Gandhi. Nehru was the future, as deputy. I remember an old
wag telling me Nehru dreamed and Gandhi prayed and it was Gandhi's dreams that
came true. There were like two octaves in an invisible music we kept hearing.
The last years of nationalism had a cornucopia of heroes. What was beautiful is
that these ideals were also lived out in the first decade of
Independence.

Joy of memories

Today people say the
Nehru or Gandhi era is over. The obituaries sound like celebrations and I admit
my nostalgia sounds like hypochondria. When I talk Nehru or Gandhi, or of all
my other heroes, I sound like a list of ailments, their missingness seems part
of a strange disease. There is not an Alzheimer's of forgetfulness, mine is the
pain and joy of living so many memories.

Of late I have been
reading pieces about Gandhi. He is called the first corporate Guru. Some would
even say he is the original pioneer of CSR. But Gandhi never outsourced ethics.
He dreamt it, lived it in the rhythms of the day. Ethics was not an
extracurricular activity, a piece of social work to compensate for corporate
antics. Gandhi is also attacked for not being as radical as Ambedkar. Ambedkar
is promoted as this week's flavour by politically correct radicals without
understanding the matrix, the quarrel and the complementarity between the two.
So from corporate don, he becomes a lesser Ambedkar. Then the RSS which faded
away after assassinating Gandhi, says India needs a statue of Godse. Godse, to
them, was not an epitome of hate but a service boy. Gandhi got in the way of
the logic of the nation-state and had to be dispatched. Godse to the RSS
excelled in the line of duty and therefore needed to be redeemed. His
assassination was a clerical act and Godse, a mere functionary.

Distortions of Gandhi

To this regime of
forgetfulness and critique, we can add the obscene appropriation of Gandhi by
Modi and his regime. Modi epitomises the violence of hate and the
instrumentalism of development, where there is no ethics of means and ends. Yet
all these distortions of Gandhi are fashionable today.

Recently I saw
Attenborough's film on Gandhi and fell asleep. I used to celebrate it and yet
it failed to echo with resonances today. It sounded too much like a white man's
idea of Gandhi, a Gandhi made easy for the West. I realise there is no easy
access to Gandhi. He is eminently quotable but there is no catechism of Gandhi.
He is a continuous series of thought experiments. He refuses replication. He
wants you to invent your own ethical world.

Yet the complex
simplicity of the man, who allows no simplification, is seductive.

Gandhi to me is both
craft and classic. He knew his Gita and his Ruskin. He knew the power of the
book but understood that the life of the book and the book of life could not be
separated. His sense of civilisation covered both canon and folklore, the text and
the orality of memory around text. To the over-literate Indian who read a
hundred books, his answer was my literacy consists in reading the same book a
hundred times. Exploring a book a hundred time is not repetition. It is
reinvention and discovery. It is an act of pilgrimage discovering or renewing
the sources of the sacred Out of this reading comes a strange book, Hind
Swaraj.

We have to stop reading
Hind Swaraj as an eccentricity. It is a manifesto and has to be read along with
other manifestoes like Discourses on Irregularity, Rights of Man or
Marx-Engel's The Communist Manifesto. It is as relevant, as important, and as
incomplete as any of them. Gandhi's silent message is to tell the reader to
write or live out the rest. Each man or woman has to write his or her own Hind
Swaraj like UR Ananthamurthy did in his last book, or Ela Bhatt has done in her
100 miles thesis.

Absorbing the world

Between Swadeshi and
Swaraj you absorb the world. No Gandhian would say: “Climate change is not our
problem.” To claim it is a problem of developed countries is to be global. To
insist it is a problem for everyman is to be planetary. Swaraj was planetary.
The last man is not just a putty, a piece of suffering. For all his
vulnerability he owns up to the world. For Gandhi, a pascalian wager is not
enough. A Gandhian wager goes beyond goodness has to outinvent evil. Gandhi
would not want a justice where the Third World would say to the first, it is
our turn to destroy the world. The new consumerism cannibalised the world.
Remember Gandhi in his Hind Swaraj wanted to rescue the West from its violence.
The new Hind Swaraj would include a critique of climate change. As CV Sheshadri
would say Gandhian truth should combine thermodynamic truth, that is, climate
change would include life, lifestyle, livelihood, life cycle, life chances in
one set. Here the technical, the ethical, the political, the cultural are not
separated. A classic is a way of keeping things together and connected.

Experiments galore

But Gandhi was
perpetually for experiment. Walking, fasting, wearing, printing, cooking,
protesting were all experiments. Morality was experimental because ethics
needed to constantly transform itself, work within a range of contexts. Ethics
and craft had a lot in common. One had to craft an ethics and make sure it
never gets outdated. In that sense everyman becomes a craftsmen responsible for
his world. The idea of rethinking waste, repair, fasting are ways of dealing
with the world. There are no throwaway cultures or human beings. Healing,
caring and working are seamless. Craft as ethics has rigour and style and most
of all the inventiveness of diversity. For Gandhi, ethics as craft has to be
inventive enough to challenge the new inventiveness of evil. Today genocide,
the death of a waterfall or a mountain, the displacement of a people, the
disappearance of culture are new forms of evil, where violence is seen as
inevitable and death, mass death has no rituals of mourning. Gandhi did
not live to link nuclear war to ordinary violence, genocide to murder, or
technology to the military industrial complex. In fact, in his way if Gandhi
were asked, “What do you think of modern ethics”? He would have said, “It would
be a good idea.”

For Gandhi, ethics
could not be extracurricular. It had to be every day. Protest had to link to
lifestyle, caring to livelihood, passion to humour so that nothing got
dogmatic. The body was the site of ethics and the ethics of the body provided
the framework for an ethics of the body politic. The body becoming the tuning
fork of a complex world and its problems. Non-violence for Gandhi was not
something you associate with war, non-violence was something you brought in to
mitigate your war with the world, the violence of everydayness. In that sense
ethics gave you agency, not just the concrete, the face to face with your
children, strangers, it gave you agency against abstract systems where cause
originated somewhere and consequence emerged somewhere else. What we need today
is a Gandhi of the concrete combining with the Gandhi fighting abstract
systems, complexities which often make an individual feel fragile, futile and
helpless.

In an odd way for
Gandhi charity began with the world and public policy at home. The body set the
rhythms of the body politic. Ethics set the tone for self-discipline and
self-reliance and therefore eliminated mass discipline and surveillance. If you
had the conscience, the panopticon as a centralised system of management was
unnecessary. The citizen is never passive and pacifism has nothing
passive about it. A pacifist like Thoreau was constantly reinventing society.
In that sense civil disobedience was an attempt to restore civility and
civic duty . The human conscience is the greatest cybernetic mechanism
invented.

Owning up to mistakes

One has to notice that
ethics is not only experimental but full of mistakes and ethics begins by
redeeming mistakes. In owning up to the mistake, you own up to self and world.
A mistake is an incomplete conversation with the world. Mistakes, the relation
between ends and means, the connectivity between life and livelihood, show a
new ecology of ethics where the body as biology, as person, as symbol becomes
the theatre for truth. There is fragility and strength here as one discovers in
vulnerability, the power of resistance. Many students confronting water cannons
for the first time during the Nirbhaya protest felt empowered in their moment
of vulnerability because they understood the brutality of the state. One wished
they would have continued their resistance because protest would have gone
beyond mere protest to a deeper sense of alternatives. Years ago, Walt Whitman,
the great American poet claimed he sang “The body electric". Our
protestors similarly could have claimed, “I sing the body satyagrahic”, if they
had addressed both violence and truth of what causes violence Here in lies the
challenge of Satyagraha today.

It has to challenge
large systems twice, first in the locality and then as a planetary idea. Even
in battling or creating work one must have an emerging theory of peace.
Satyagraha cannot be sequestered as an applied social work project
because ethics has to be political responding to wider issues.

One must remember that
Gandhi's satyagrahi was an imagination. Gandhi's ashrams were laboratories
where one invented alternative possibilities while the world slept. It was the
one place where everydayness as invention as rhythm talked to the future.
Gandhi was no luddite. William Shirer in his biography of Gandhi narrates
that the loud speaker was introduced for the first time in a rally addressed by
Gandhi. His charkha was not a traditional tool but something reinvented several
times. But Gandhi's craft like his ethics followed a linguistic rather than a
techno-innovative model. He was sensitive to displacement, waste, obsolescence.
His technology spoke dialects rather than attempt to create standardised forms.
In fact, it challenged us to return to ethics, he wanted ethics to be more
inventive than mere techniques. His creativity demanded that innovation should
be more than instrumental. Every man than becomes a craftsmen creating a new
commons of ideas to be shared. There is none of the hypocrisy of intellectual
property rights which confuses need and greed.

Such a world goes
beyond the make-in-India model which only wants to manufacture but fails to ask
ethical, ecological questions, where productivity displaces justice. A cosmetic
Gandhi threatens India twice, first as a farce and second as a tragedy.

The man haunts me. His
experiments fascinate me. He demands the storyteller. I feel his magic. He made
mistakes. He knew it. He did not ask us to repeat it. His leadership appealed
to the ethics of my generation. I feel it is time to reinvent it. One senses a
world ready for the poetry of it. This essay is a prayer for that other world.

Since
last few weeks I came across readers and friends who are facing several issues
in their life. Especially in their relationships with parents, spouse or
friends. After listening to them and thinking about my own life I realized
several things which I feel needs to be shared among all who are facing same
emotional turmoil.

As
humans, we are emotional beings. Beyond our biological and materialistic needs,
our heart looks for emotional acceptance, understanding and care. This, at
larger level contributes to our need for dignity, peace and happiness. Once
fulfilled, we feel comfortable and satisfied with our life. The question here
is, does it ever gets fulfilled? Do we always get acceptance, dignity, peace or
happiness in the way which we have expected? The answer, I am sure is NO for
any normal human being. Very few people only can reach upto level where he/she
is completely happy and satisfied. This dissatisfaction and unhappiness actually
keeps our life active, it gives aim and sets targets for our entire life span.
Then why unhappiness, dissatisfaction and avoidance is problematic??

We
all have some or other kind of “emotional void” within our heart. This void is
filled by other person and this union of self with other person becomes
relationships. Parent-child, boyfriend-girlfriend or husband-wife. Any kind of
relationship includes more than one person. All person (mostly two) are
expected to play a role defined for particular relationship. Being brother has
different role than being boyfriend or being boss has different role than being
son. If we don’t bide ourselves to these defined roles, it creates a problem in
relationship. Obviously, one cannot behave has brother with his girlfriend. :)

The
person who is filling up our emotional void is perceived as our “own”. We feel
that we possess that person and tries to do everything and anything to keep
him/her happy. Like parents cares for their children. With the passage of time,
our bounding with another person keeps increasing and passiveness starts
appearing from such care. This care infect, is a kind of structure of control
we create for people whom we think as our own. This structure of control may be
seen as care from our side but it becomes limitations for other one. Parents
forcing their kids to study, simple and clear example of this where one wants
to play but other person thinks that playing is not good as studying and
creates emotional stress among relationship. It is applicable to all our
relationship which stops and restrict person to do, think or speak which he/she
feels to.

Increasing
emotional stress on any one individual in relationship affects emotions of
other person too ( if other person is sensitive enough to grasp such irritation
or emotional stress). Going back to above mentioned example, forcing kid to
study may also hurt his mother but still, she’ll force him. We as humans in
given relationships are under constant fear of losing control over other
person. Because we think ourselves as right and good. We are afraid that our
loved ones may not able grasp or understood things
which good or right according to us. This fear, keeps us on toe and we wrap
such feelings with so-called care.

Our care is
actually a form of control, which we never want loose and expect other person
understand this because it is right from our side. If other person fails to do
so, it will create series of issues and problems in relationship or breakdown
of relationship in long run. “I cared so much for him/her but still he don’t
value me” is common feeling we encounter during such phases. What should one do
in such condition? Well! I am not sure, but here are some hints that can help
to sort out such puzzles of relationships.

Stop expecting
that you care for some and that person should equally care for you.

If other person
don’t do as per your expectation, try to know reason behind that, but never
stop person for doing, saying or thinking in his/her way.

“I am right and
you are wrong” is most vicious statement and feeling for any relationship.

Try to accept
changes in personality of other person. “He/she was not like that before this,
why he/she become like this now?” is foolish question.

Play your
defined role, be a brother for a sister and boyfriend for girlfriend, not a
vice versa

Think about
happiness in terms of liberty and not of possessiveness. Remember, you cannot
own a person whether he/she is good or bad.

Enjoy every
moment of companionship, stop worrying about relationship, self and worldly
situations.

Most
importantly, allow and accept everything from which strong maturity. Your ultimate
goal for is happiness. Happiness emerges from liberations and not bondage.

Pain, a wonderful human feeling we
all come across being the part of society. Society is basically a web of
relationships and we all are connected with each other in various manner. Pain
is most human feeling and faced by all irrespective to our culture, climate or social
conditions. Interesting questions were raised in mind while I was traveling
back to my hometown, a city was being prepared for 10 days Ganesh utsav, a
festival of inviting lord of creativity at home as a guest and doing best
hospitality to him. What made me to think about pain is the linkages between
our ability to create and resolve pain. Religion, of course attribute this
capacity to lord Ganesha who comes, absorbs pain and sorrow, and goes away. But
is it something psychological or scientific about it? Well, don’t know about it!!

Pain has two connotations i.e.
biological and social. Biological is almost clear to all of us that a wound is
painful but most of us get confuse by pain created by(in) human relationships.
Many of my friends, including me complains about feeling low, or feeling
avoided, or feeling unwanted in different situations in different social
settings. These things create a feeling popularly understood as ‘hurt’. So what
is this pain or hurt?

Our thoughts are product of
information we choose to grasp. Humans do not grasp information directly but we
use some kind of ‘social lens’ or ‘social filter’ ( our preconceived notions
and understanding ) to process this information. These processed information
becomes our thoughts. This is why X person viewed in different manner and
others view same X person in different manner. For instance, some people thinks
me as frank and straightforward person while for others I am rude and blunt. These
filtered thoughts becomes part of our personality traits and frames our experiences.
For example, I am grown up in surrounding where people don’t trust each other,
this information of not trusting people are included in my personality traits
and therefore I don’t trust my neighbours or friends. Interestingly, my neighbors or friends may not have information as I had and so they may not
have element of doubt in their personality. Such situation creates conflict in
relationships when personality traits of one person do not match with others. This conflict if not get resolved, creates a
feeling, understood as ‘hurt’ or pain.

Generally, people who gets hurt
tries to distract their mind. It’s wrong!! If I got wound, if it is paining hard, and I choose to watch TV to
distract mind, will it heal that wound? Obviously no!!! Rather infection of
that wound will spread in rest part of my body leading to more pain. Same thing
happens when we get hurt by person, we seek healing by deleting or avoiding
that thought which not going to help in longer run. Than how can we resolve
hurt or pain? Briefly, I share thoughts about resolving pain which may not be
true according to all, but objections are always welcomed :)

Our capacity to choose between
peace and anger while facing unfavorable situation will decide our ability to
absorb pain.

Do not seek to escape from pain, ‘stress
busters’ are myth, do not avoid pain, try to heal pain (remember watching TV or
going out for holidays etc. are temporary solutions to avoid pain)

Think about your own thoughts
which is creating pain not about situation or personality which is cause of
pain according to you. No situation or personality can hurt you without your
permission.

Never ever think of revenge or
tit-for-tat, it’ll waste your time, energy, relationship with self.

Allow your mind to think
creatively when you are hurt, it’s damn difficult but it’s good for soul. ( If
I am thrown out of train even by having first class ticket, I would lead a movement,
instead of fighting with ticket checker )

Do not entangle in bad habits or
company when you are hurt.

Avoid sharing your emotions with
other people, remember we all have different ‘social lens’ to understand reality.
You are only right person to understand your own reality.

Do not expect someone to come and
help you to heal pain, it’ll make you more dependable and not empowered.

Pain or hurt is great tool for emancipation
or self-realization but it can turn to be destructive if not understood and
learned properly.

Finally, do not allow situation
or people to hurt you, think about ‘social lens’ of other person who is hurting
you. If someone do not offer me chair in party, should I get hurt or should try
to get chair….. syam vichar kijiye ( think yourself )